Ephesians 5:25-2725 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

The church is the bride of Christ. In a marriage, the bride and the groom are one…we belong to Jesus and He belongs to us.

WHERE JESUS GOES AND IS…that’s where the BRIDE GOES…the church goes with him.

This begs the question, where is Jesus and where does he go?I think we agree…he is and goes everywhere.Soooo, where should the church go and be…you got it…everywhere!

Think of it this way… If I placed a wall up in my marriage where on one side of the wall I had my family, my marriage, maybe even most of my friends, and a lot of my activities, but on the other side of the wall…I placed a number of relationships that my wife, Christie didn’t know about. Let’s just say that I placed some activities that I enjoy, such as season tickets to the OKC Thunder, but instead of 2 tickets, I only purchased one…for me…awkward. Maybe on this side of the wall I put other things I enjoy like traveling and eating at wonderful restaurants – so it would be no big deal for me to travel without my wife to New York City to eat at Tavern on the Green.

That would be weird right? Like stupid weird. That would be living with 2 separate worlds (sadly the reality of some marriages). In marriage the bride and the groom are one…we go together!

This conversation about the church starts here….Where Jesus is and goes…the CHURCH is and goes. The church isn’t a building, an institution, or a press release statement about our stance on some policy.

THE CHURCH IS YOU!The world must experience this. The church has been walled in. Society identifies the church as a building on a city block.

The church IS everywhere!This means that we carry the GOSPEL everywhere – through every DOOR. No walls should divide the church from the real world.

Every real world door needs you to carry Jesus, who loves all things – right into the middle of the room. BUT, here’s the problem we have divided things into sacred/ secular, or spiritual/ non-spritual, or clean and unclean. On the clean side of the wall we have things like the Church, K-Love, Chick-fil-a, our personal time with God, and our prayers On the secular side of the wall we have things like: jobs, movies, school, entertainment, sports, & nearly everything else in life.

In all seriousness, the spiritual side of the wall -- the Church, Jesus, our devotional life, and the Scriptures – they rarely intersect our jobs, our relationships, sports teams, school days, neighborhoods, and everyday life.

We don’t fully know what it means to be everywhere.

We are comfortable and fine with the church being a building and place that we enter ourselves. Sure, anyone is welcome, but the idea of the church being everywhere is not practiced.

The truth is we intersect people all the time, but we don’t do a great job of carrying the gospel.

I’m not talking about Jesus existing in your head and heart -- meaning he goes with you everywhere. I’m talking about Jesus and the Church being spoken in WORD and DEED – everywhere.

So why does this matter – because, we all agree, the Gospel matters. Because the church can no longer be marginalized in our life.Because the church can no longer be marginalized by the society at large.

The church can’t be pushed to the edges any longer.The bride goes where the groom goes.She Is Everywhere.